SG Daily Wang Leads Four Medal Fencing Haul

On a night of fencing triumph for Singapore, Wang Wenying won the country's first individual gold medal of the 2015 SEA Games, triumphing in the women’s individual foil. Helping in a four-medal haul in the sport, Lim Wei Wen and Choy Yu Yong picked up silver medals and Samson Lee claimed bronze in front of a passionate crowd at the OCBC Arena.

The experienced Wang, 34, who won a team gold in the 2007 SEA games, defeated Justine Gail Tinio of the Philippines, 15-7 after making a blistering start to open up a 5-0 lead and she never looked back on the way to her greatest success in the sport.

“This is my first ever individual medal in the SEA Games and it is a gold one, so I am delighted,” said Wang.

“My path to the finals was very difficult. In the quarter-finals, I beat an opponent (Malaysia’s Natasha Abu Bakar) whom I had lost to in my three previous matches, then my semi-finals opponent (Nunta Chantasuvannasin of Thailand) was a gold medal winner in the 2007 SEA Games, so they were very tough matches,” she added.

“In the finals, I was up against a fencer I had never competed against before so I really didn’t know how she fences. At the start I didn’t really move or try to score a point. I was just trying to figure out how she fences, then I just focused,” added Wang.

Wang, who also is a coach at Absolute Fencing, said she had entered the competition quietly confident.

“I knew I had a chance but I didn’t want to say that,” she said with a smile, “I didn’t want to think too much about the results or allow myself to think that it might be easy. I just focused on each opponent as a new one and fought from the first point to the last point,” she added.

Lim, who bagged Singapore’s first ever Asian Games fencing medal with his bronze in Incheon last year, was defeated by Vietnam's Nguyen Tien Nhat 8-15 in the men's epee final. The pair had both claimed bronze in the epee in Korea but the Vietnamese was rewarded for an attacking approach.

“He found the right tactics actually, he caught me off guard. I am a fencer who does a lot of preparation, calm and slow. He knows me pretty well and he just went for it,” said Lim.

“I am disappointed I didn’t get gold but I am proud of this silver and if you look at the rest of the team, you can be sure that we are going to come back even stronger in the team events. We will go all out - you should watch out for us in the team events,” he added.

Nguyen Tien Nhat had earlier beaten Samson Lee for a spot in the finals, leaving the Singaporean to settle for a bronze medal.